Building brands in a changing society

Choosing the Right Social Platform for a Social Message

Investing in the community, protecting the environment – brands increasingly have stories to share about the ways they are giving back society. And what better way to create a dialogue about social and environmental issues than to take advantage of the many social media platforms designed to fuel interaction? With a growing universe of options, the challenge has now become choosing the right vehicle for the message.

For this reason, the team behind the SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index, an analysis of best practice social media sustainability communication, put out an update covering the new tools and platforms available to brands with a social responsibility message to share. This latest installment is a quick review of popular and emerging options for communicating sustainability, with examples from leading brands.

Highlights from the report include:

Pinterest: A platform for organizing and sharing content, with an emphasis on images and videos. IBM uses Pinterest as a channel to communicate on a variety of topics, including its corporate citizenship initiatives and Smarter Planet, its thought leadership platform. The SMI-Wizness report recommends using Pinterest as the “shop window” for a brand’s best content.

Tumblr: A full-customizable blog hosting platform with a built-in social network. Danone uses Tumblr as its main publishing tool for Down to Earth, its social responsibility platform. It works well for short, informative content that features big visuals.

Instagram: Fast, easy photo sharing combined with a social network. The SMI-Wizness report notes that leading brands have yet to use Instagram for their communicating their social responsibility. The exclusive focus on photos might be limiting but, similar to Pinterest, it could again be seen as a complement to other channels.

Viddy and Socialcam: Two new mobile video apps that integrate with Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media platforms. Mobile video is great for driving consumer engagement: Under its ecomagination sustainability platform, GE encouraged consumers to submit a Viddy clip or Instagram photo of their local city lights to #GELights for a chance to win a trip to the London Olympics and a lighting retrofit.